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Four out of ten Danish companies say they have received job applications from applicants who do not actually want to work for them.

The companies were responding to a survey conducted by the Confederation of Danish Enterprise (Dansk Erhverv, DE), which asked about applications received over the last year.

The template applications are a source of frustration for businesses, said DE head consultant Peter Halkjær.

“This means that companies are using a lot of resources [on the applications],” Halkjær said.

“But it also means that labour is being offered by jobseekers, and businesses can make use of that,” he added.

“Businesses are affected to a large degree by a lack of available labour,” Halkjær said.

A large number of companies have previously confirmed that they receive pro forma or template applications, Ritzau reports.

But the extent demonstrated by the survey came as a surprise, Halkjær said.

One cause of the trend is strict demands mad of jobseekers, according to Aarhus University professor Henning Jørgensen.

In order to continue receiving state and unemployment insurance (a-kasse in Danish) income support payments, jobseekers must send a set number of job applications weekly or monthly.

That can result in a scattergun approach to sending out CVs, Jørgensen said.

“I agree that there are too many pro forma job applications, but that is because jobseekers are forced to constantly apply for jobs without it really mattering what they apply for – as long as they apply for a lot,” Jørgensen told newspaper Politiken.

Halkjær said that authorities should take more seriously the issue of non-serious job applications.

“There are people [receiving unemployment income payments] making themselves known to be available for work.

“But their availability is limited because they are not making use of the offers that are there,” he said.

“We are therefore calling for job centre [authorities, ed.] to be better at sanctioning jobseekers that are not making themselves available to work,” Halkjær added.